Wakeman suspect charged with child pornography

A Wakeman man faces federal charges in Connecticut on allegations of child pornography.

Robert Dudukovich, 24, is charged with five counts of distribution of child pornography and one charge of aiding and abetting the transportation of child pornography. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum term of five years in jail and a maximum term of 20 years on each count.

Dudukovich is accused of managing a chat group on Kik, a smartphone messaging app, that provided a forum for members to communicate about their sexual interest in young boys, according to the Greenwich Time. The forum also reportedly allowed members to share and trade porn primarily depicting young boys engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

Also, Dudukovich is accused of sharing child pornography images and videos with group members, which included a person in Connecticut, according to the news account. It allegedly included videos of a minor engaged in sexual acts with another minor and a minor engaged in a sexual act with an adult.

Another allegation against Dudukovich is sharing a link to his Dropbox account, which contained additional images and videos of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to the Greenwich Time.

A federal grand jury in Hartford, Conn. indicted Dudukovich on Aug. 30, said a deputy clerk with the U.S. District Court of Connecticut.

Dudukovich was arrested Wednesday in Berlin Heights, according to the GreenwichTime (Conn.). The arresting agency is unknown.

“I had never heard of this individual until someone called (the station),” said Berlin Heights Police Chief Charity Schafer, who noted the caller was concerned about the allegations. “We’ve never dealt with him.”

Schafer said she doesn’t know what agency arrested Dudukovich, adding her department had nothing to with the federal case. Wakeman Police Chief Tim Hunker said he is “aware of him” and knows who Dudukovich is, but there have been no criminal cases against him in the village.

After Dudukovich’s arrest, he appeared Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in Toledo. A clerk in that court said the defendant was ordered to be detained pending his removal to Connecticut and was remanded to the custody of U.S. marshals.

“He has not yet appeared in Connecticut,” the Connecticut deputy clerk said Wednesday.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Meyer in New Haven, Conn. The case is being prosecuted by assistant U.S. Attorney Neeraj Patel.

The prosecution is part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood Initiative, which was launched in 2006. According to the Project Safe Childhood website — www.justice.gov/psc, the mission is to marshal “federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.”

No area common pleas court dockets listed Dudukovich as a defendant in criminal cases.